Events and trends that matter

March 06, 2006

Kathy Sierra on Creating Passionate Users at ETech

Well, it's going to be a tough act to follow. Kathy Sierra, whose Creating Passionate Users blog will give you an insight as to why, blew my mind at Etech with her tutorial on that same topic.

Kathy has numerous, far-reaching, and distant analogies that debug the process of getting users engaged and then passionate. I won't spoil the experience by explaining the slight-of-hand, but if you can get to a presentation she's giving, do it.

The only thing standing between you-as-amateur and you-as-expert is dedication. All that talk about prodigies? We could all be prodigies (or nearly so) if we just put in the time and focused. At least that's what the brain guys are saying. Best of all--it's almost never too late.

Seriously. How many people think they've missed their opportunity to be a musician, or an expert golfer, or even a chess grand master because they didn't start when they were young? Or because they simply lacked natural talent? Those people are (mostly) wrong. According to some brain scientists, almost anyone can develop world-class (or at least top expertise) abilities in things for which they aren't physically impaired. Apparently God-given talent, natural "gifts", and genetic predispositions just aren't all they're cracked up to be. Or at least not in the way most of us always imagined. It turns out that rather than being naturally gifted at music or math or chess or whatever, a superior performer most likely has a gift for concentration, dedication, and a simple desire to keep getting better. In theory, again, anyone willing to do what's required to keep getting better WILL get better.

And her pitch is that becoming an expert is all about becoming passionate about the activity. Like my experience in karate, where getting the belts, one by one, is intended to create and maintain a growing passion. And the same thinking has to go into the development of products, so that users can quickly gain a sense of minimal mastery, and then go on to an escalating series of other, more complex challenges. This is often exploited in games, but really reaappears everywhere where people are passionate. Her examples range all over.